All posts tagged "Congress"

Critics tore into House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) after a report revealed one of his top aides planned a luxury-packed European staff trip.

NBC News reported Wednesday that Curt Beaulieu, a senior policy and tax adviser to the speaker, had been authorized to lead a weeklong bipartisan staff delegation to Italy and France in late October. A draft itinerary obtained by the outlet included a Ferrari factory, luxury brand companies in Milan or Florence and day trips to France's Champagne region.

Johnson's office said the trip had been canceled after NBC asked about it, citing an unspecified conflict. The office did not directly say who would have paid for the journey, which was set to take place roughly two weeks before the midterm elections....

A top aide to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had planned a weeklong European trip packed with luxury stops, until reporters started asking questions.

Curt Beaulieu, a senior policy and tax adviser to the speaker, had been authorized to lead a staff delegation to Italy and France in late October, NBC News reported Wednesday, citing a draft itinerary emailed to U.S. Embassy personnel in Rome and Paris. Johnson's office told the outlet the trip had been called off after NBC inquired about the plans.

The proposed schedule had the group stopping at a Ferrari factory near Bologna and a Barilla pasta and cheese processor in Parma before visiting luxury goods companies in Milan or Florence. From there, the delegation would head to France for excursions to the Champagne region and a meeting at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development....

Some colleagues of Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA) worried that a young woman he brought to a congressional dinner in Brussels, days before Russia invaded Ukraine, might have been a Russian honeypot, according to an exclusive report Friday from Sources Say.

The dinner took place during a congressional delegation's Feb. 18-24, 2022, trip to Belgium for a NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting, reporter Juliegrace Brufke wrote, citing multiple people familiar with the trip. Russian forces poured into Ukraine on the trip's last day.

Two sources said the woman indicated she was Polish. But when a colleague on the trip who speaks Polish tried to talk with her, she didn't seem to follow him, according to the report. A third source, who attended the dinner and heard about the exchange afterward, remembered her nationality differently: Ukrainian, a language that source said she couldn't speak either....

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried bragging about how productive Congress has been under GOP leadership, only for X's community notes to call him out.

In a Friday post, the account for the MeidasTouch political news network pointed out a "brutal community note" that appeared below one of Johnson's posts.

In Johnson's post, he boasted that "House Republicans passed over 70 bills this week alone," and touted that the number "adds to our total of over 900 bills passed through the House so far this Congress."...

Veteran political strategist James Carville turned a boast by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) about Congress into a punchline by simply agreeing with him.

On the latest episode of "Politics War Room," Carville and co-host Al Hunt zeroed in on Johnson's claim that the current Congress was the most productive since Harry Truman's in 1948, a comparison that collapsed the moment anyone checked the history. Carville and Hunt were sizing up Republican vulnerabilities heading into the midterms, with President Donald Trump's approval sitting at 36 percent.

"Speaker Johnson's expertise does not extend to history," Hunt said. "That was the do-nothing Congress."...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas built a case for his own impeachment by praising his Republican senator "friends" on a podcast, a legal expert warned.

In a Tuesday episode of the "Legal Breakdown" podcast, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner reacted to comments made by Thomas during an episode of "Verdict with Ted Cruz." Thomas thanked Republican Texas senator Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and other GOP allies for defending him and his wife, Ginni Thomas.

"You're one of the people who actually stands up, particularly at times when others seem to wither, and I appreciate it," Thomas told Cruz, per Kirschner. "And more personally, when we — my wife and I — were under attack for obvious reasons, you and Mike Lee and some of the other friends would stand up."...